


Rough Winds

by psocoptera



Series: Winterverse [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2018-02-10 19:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2037732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara only put the baby down for a minute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rough Winds

**Author's Note:**

> The second Winterverse story. A prequel, chronologically - the first half takes place seven years after the show, the second half eighteen years after, earlier in the same year as "Summer's Lease". Because the Winterverse is an AU, Katara and Aang have an entirely different set of kids here than they did in Legends of Korra.

Katara is smiling when she comes in. Maybe she's betraying her ice-locked roots, but there's something to be said for this "spring thaw". They've been so constantly on the move she's never gotten the full impact before - the melting snow drifts, green shoots pushing up through the grey, grabbing a wrap instead of a parka. She could get used to this, she thinks.

She tosses the wrap back onto its hook and turns to the other hook, where she's left the sling carrier snuggling her napping son.

The sling is there - the baby isn't.

There's a moment of white nothing, and then she realizes she's turned the sling upside-down and is shaking it like a bag of onions. She flinches and drops it, shifting automatically to a bending stance. Angry spirits? Human enemies? Still on the ground? Climbing down the cliffs?

"AANG!" she calls out, loud, strong, urgent. He'll be much faster, scouting by air -

Denial is a deep cross-current but she forces her mind into churn at the surface. She picks up the sling again. No rips, no marks, drawstrings untied rather than cut. They weren't in a hurry. She pivots, scans - nothing else missing. They didn't take waste cloths. Did they have their own? Did they not plan to need any?

Bargaining wants to bubble up, _anything you want, anything for my baby back_ , but she lets it collapse into froth. There are too many possibilities, too many enemies. There's guilt, too, how could she have _left_ him, even for a minute - no.

She goes to the window and throws open the heavy wooden shutters. "AAAANG!" she screams again, higher pitched, the panic is seeping in around the edges now. She has to concentrate, bring up ice walls on the cliff paths, slow down anyone out there... she will kill anyone out there, she will grind them to paste beneath glaciers for touching her son.

It's all converging, focus and emotions, one perfect cataract. _Drown them all,_ she thinks, _Water like they've never imagined, I will raise a wave a thousand feet high and sweep this world clean if he's -_

On the edge of her hearing, out where only a mother's sensitivity could catch it, she hears the delighted chortle of her six-month-old son.

She looks up and out, squinting against the pale blue of the spring sky. She catches the swoop of Aang's glider, and, there, she cranes her neck and stares hard, there is _something_ strapped to his chest that can only be their son.

The wave within her crystallizes. The panic is gone; the rage is ice-hard. "AAANNNG!" she bellows, and smacks her hand down at the still-melting snow outside the window, sending a tall finger of ice stabbing into the sky, pointing accusingly at her husband.

The glider banks and dives. The wings are between her and Aang, hanging underneath, hanging _upside-down_ , how is Sonam strapped in, what if he falls out? She's seen Aang catch Sokka, from further away, but the little limbs are so tiny, to try to grab, the little hands can't grip back... and what if Aang miscalculates, what if they drop, and he can't bend in time, the mountain is _solid rock_... she watches, hands clenched on the windowsill, as Aang pulls up and drops to his feet as casually and delicately as any of the thousands of times she's watched him land.

"Hey, Katara!" he waves. "How about that, his first day out! He loves it, just listen to him!"

Sonam is squealing happily, and it melts her a little, helplessly, a little trickle from the block of ice inside her. Aang is still walking towards her, and when she doesn't respond, his face falls. "Katara?"

"I -" she tries. "I just stepped out - you didn't - Aang, what were you _thinking_?"

Sonam squeals less happily, and Aang cups a soothing palm over his fuzzy little head, gesturing with the other hand and popping himself up and over the windowsill.

"Hey," he says, "I didn't mean to worry you. I thought you would figure he was with me."

"You thought I would - we still have enemies out there! I thought he'd been kidnapped or, or, abducted, like Sokka that time, gone where I couldn't even follow..." She realizes, furiously, that she is starting to cry. Bah, she's like a simmering pot these days, always ready to boil over...

Sonam, not to be outdone, starts to whimper. Aang bounces him in his web of straps but he is not to be soothed.

"Oh great," Katara says crossly, "You'd better give him here." She undoes her shirt as Aang releases the harness, and their son breaks into a full wail just as he's passed from one chest to the other.

Nipple in mouth, he melts instantly into contentment.

Aang is giving her a rueful look that she's guessing means he wishes she could be so easily calmed.

"You're right," Aang says, "I should have told you. It's kind of a big deal, really, you should have been there to see it. I was just so excited to get the harness finished, and we're finally getting some good weather..."

Katara blinks, hard. "Wait. Aang. This is some sort of... no! You can't _do_ that! It's not safe. I mean, for you, sure, but not for a little baby like this! What if there's a gust of wind, and the glider shakes! You can't shake babies, ever, they can get really, really hurt! All that swooping around... it's too rough! His little neck can't support his head up there!"

"That's what the forehead strap is for," Aang says patiently. "Katara, I know you did more child-minding in your tribe than I did with the monks, but this isn't one of my crazy ideas. Airbenders always take their fall-born up in spring, before they start walking, so that the currents of the air feel as familiar as the ground." He holds his hand out, spread wide, banking like a glider. "He feels the wind, and he feels me react... by the time he's ready for a tandem glider, he won't even have to think about how to move with the wind, it'll be just like balancing in a kayak is to you."

"But what if those straps break," Katara says, anxiously. "What if the _glider_ breaks... yes, I probably would take him in the sling in a kayak, if I needed to go somewhere, and we had a kayak, and water, but... that's a kayak. It doesn't do flips."

"Uh, I've seen you roll like a hundred times," Aang says.

"Well, I wouldn't roll with Sonam in the sling!" Katara snaps. "I wouldn't go out with him at all if the seas were too high."

"And I wouldn't go out in bad weather," Aang says. "But if we're really committed towards raising him as an Air Nomad, he has to spend time in the air." He looks down at his son, curled quietly against his wife's breast, and up at her. "You have to let him fly."

Katara looks down too, and her heart swells like a tide. He is her little moon, and his pull on her is inexorable.

But she's so tired. She thinks she might cry again.

"I can't do this," she says, biting her lip.

"What, is he stinky?" Aang asks. "Pass him here, I'll get him."

"No," Katara says. "That's not what I..."

"What then," Aang asks softly, "The Air?"

"No," Katara says, "We have to try, that hasn't changed. But I can't - "

Aang looks worried. "You're not having second thoughts about..." He swallows.

"No!" Katara says. "Never. But, Aang, I can't be the careful one all the time. Yes, he can fly, if it's a training thing! But I can't let you fly away with him while I sit here worrying. It can't be you getting the giggles and me dealing with the tears. I need you doing half of the worrying. At least half."

"I worry," Aang says.

Katara just looks at him.

"I promised when I came back to you that I would take care of you," Aang says. "This isn't that summer any more."

Katara sighs. "Sometimes I think it's always going to be that summer," she says.

"Hey," Aang says, "No." He puts a careful hand to her face and turns her head toward the window.

"Right now it's spring, and I'm going to take our son, and I want you to come outside with me and watch his almost very first flight."

"Our airbender son," Katara says, a little wistful, handing him over. "Here I am his mother, and I'm out of my element with him." She watches Aang carefully wind the straps of the flight harness back around the baby.

"I was terrified," Aang says suddenly, quickly. "That's why I didn't want to wait for you to get back. It was like the comet all over again. That I'm the only person in the world who can do this... what if I get it wrong? What if I forget something important?" As he cinches in the straps, Sonam breaks into a grin.

Katara leans over the baby between them and kisses her husband, quickly but deeply. "Hey," she says, "You saved the world. You can do this."

Aang follows her out. The wind catches in their clothes and makes Sonam laugh and wave his hands.

"Okay, Nam-nam," Aang says, "Here we go!" He shakes open the glider and kicks off. Katara stands and watches as they soar up, bright against the blue sky.

\---  
 _Eleven years later_

Katara is frantic - where is her baby? He's not where she set him down to go chase his toddling brother. He's not with Aang, drowsing in his chair out on the terrace. The twins have finally learned better than to take him out of the playpit without asking an adult. Could he have been snatched somehow? She can't believe anybody would be able to get within miles of the mountain without one of the kids spotting them - something from the spirit world? Aang is in no shape to go chasing around - she knows you can't bend in the spirit world, but if something has her baby, she thinks, she's going to find a way, raise a wave that will...

She's moving automatically, looking for anything out of place. The smallest flight harness is missing. Her eyes narrow in suspicion, and she runs outside. A glider is circling slowly, and the person hanging beneath it...

"SONAAAAM!"

Her oldest child drops into a gasp-inducing dive and Katara doesn't breathe again until he's standing in front of her and she's tearing at the straps that hold her giggling youngest child to his chest. "Sonam, what were you _thinking_?" she finally asks, when she cradles Palden protectively.

"It's _spring_ ," he says, "And, well, we want this kid to grow up to be an airbender, right?"

Katara takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, tries to quiet the crashing wave of her heart.

"I, uh, I've gone up with Yonten too," Sonam admits. "Since Papa stopped flying. That's the most important age to spend time in the air, you know, when the kid is still, um, learning how to run and stuff, and falling down a lot?"

Katara looks down at her tiny son, and back at her tall one. She wonders what else she's missed, focusing on Aang.

She takes another deep breath and pulls her firstborn to her with the arm that isn't holding the baby. "That's the most important time, hm? What about when the kid is much too responsible than he should be at his age?" She squeezes him to her, misty-eyed.

"Maaaa," Sonam squirms, muttering, "Do you have to do that?"

She steps back reluctantly. "I never want you to do anything like that again," she says, and Sonam opens his mouth to argue, but she's not done. "Never without getting permission from me first. Do you hear me? You let me know _every time_."

Sonam's open mouth widens into an incredulous grin.

"And I want you to have me or your father check the harness fastenings before you go out," Katara continues, "Every time, you understand? And your sister has to go up with you as a spotter."

"We can do that!" Sonam agrees quickly. "So... I'm not in trouble?"

Katara hesitates. "Did your father know about this?"

Sonam looks away. "Well... we never _talked_ about it."

 _But he knew_ , Katara finishes mentally. She sighs. Aang these days is like a breeze blowing backwards, retracting from everywhere it might have insinuated itself. Having parceled out his transferable Avatar duties, letting Sonam see to his brothers' air training is just the next logical step.

She reminds herself that Aang was hardly older when he had saved the world. Hard to believe, these days. She's never wanted her children to feel like they have to carry that kind of weight.

"Let's talk about it," she says, putting her hand on Sonam's shoulder. "If you're officially training your brothers, maybe we can lighten some of your other chores. Or maybe someone else should take over, officially, with you advising... let's talk about it."

She looks at her beautiful oldest son, and down at her smallest, dozing against her.

 _A wave like a broom,_ she thinks, _to sweep a path for you, the length of the world._ She will never fly like they do. But she'll do whatever it takes to give them the sky.


End file.
